Circle
by Youkomon
Summary: Because family is like a circle, bent at each curve with every possibility and becoming distorted with each new adventure. But it refuses to stop. Drabble collection centered on the different viewpoints of Ben, Gwen and Grandpa concerning life and rabbits
1. Grandpa Max

First up: Grandpa Max. The one who can legally drive...and do plenty of other alien-fighting things which I doubt are legal.

* * *

A lot of things bother him. Like the way his hair is starting to panel off into a darker shade of grey and how the tea always tilts to the wrong side of the cup when the van isn't even _moving. _A little jitter of the fingers and he feels the scorch of the temperature drip through the china.

He doesn't even like tea anyway, he always thought it was more of a snobby, British tendency to show why the restraint and authority of tradition have the power to hold back little men in grey suits from saving the world. And hell, the china isn't even made up of that good quality you expect to find on this side of the globe, it's become worn down with sudden curves and lopsided edges; he'll give it its due credit though. Not all china pieces breathe for long in this van.

But he craves the action, the excitement that beckons youth away. The youth that rests in the eyes of those children who allow him to replay a role he'd previously outgrown, that lets him revisit a few scenarios he remembers and a few he'd rather not. So many memories, encounters and far too many pleasantries exchanged…

And now he just wishes he could be sure that bright, vibrant green that sparkles in the rain when his grandchildren stare out the window and moan at their shimmering reflections is a hundred percent human. And he wishes himself away to another time, another place, where he didn't have to worry about throwing away anyone's life except his own and to charge into a granite-toned building with a gun could set a man's veins on fire. But then he realises his selfishness and the existence of his grandchildren and even those dull lives of his own children that he values higher than any creature he's even seen in this life or the next.

Maybe he grew up to fast, maybe he's old and maybe he's making his own family grow up too fast but hey, he just sets his hands on the wheel and tells those possibly-human grandchildren of his to quit yapping and buckle up. Because that's what he does. And it doesn't seem to bother him in the least.


	2. Gwen

And now for the little orange-haired one. ;P

Sorta post-summer vacation.

* * *

It all started with a boy. First he tweaked the ends of her hair, flea bites at the loose strands that hung over her neck and curiosity limbering his every move. Then he began slanting his head forwards at ridiculous angles whenever her cheeks puffed up in order to stay in her line of vision, shutting off the rest of the world with a smug grin.

It wasn't so much that the distractions got to her, it was the manner in which they were employed with that stupid, Cheshire-cat-like grin. It had been months ago in the back of a sweltering van, air conditioning bobbing along to the undercurrent of steady movement, when she was last thrust under such careless actions with a similar flash of white teeth, leaving her temper rising and feelings bruised…slightly.

She wasn't at all flattered. Not when he stole that book on ancient ruins Grandpa Max had given her, nor that stupid cat mask Ben had painstakingly sell taped together in a jumble of black and purple-

"_Jeez Gwen, here's your stupid mask back…don't tell me you're gonna cry 'cos the ears aren't arranged right?"_

_-_after he squashed it under Four Arms and bent it into two separate fragments during a particularly nasty fight.

She almost lost it then.

Except not quite because she was strong and clever and like all little girls, she had a way with words. She let them clamber over his stupid ears and fill up his arrogant head and when he lowered his head and blushed, she took both the book and the mask back from his wasted hands and didn't say a word. Not a jab.

Because Ben would have always answered her back.


End file.
